Art review: 5 Stars: Art Reflects on Peace, Justice, Equality, Democracy And Progress

SINGAPORE — With the glut of SG50-related exhibitions, it would hardly be surprising if those of us suffering from a touch of SG50 burnout might approach with some caution an exhibition with the title 5 Stars: Art Reflects On Peace, Justice, Equality, Democracy And Progress.

Such fears might be assuaged when considering how those themes — which are, of course, the ideals represented by the stars in the Singapore flag — are highlighted in the Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) latest show: Practitioners who eschew blind boosterism and simple answers.

Ho Tzu Nyen’s take on Justice, for example, hints at the general tenor of the exhibition’s approach to these broad ideals. His work, No Man (as in “no man is an island”) plunges us into a disorienting cacophony of smoke and mirrors, an immersive, looping video installation. Mournful voices are discordantly raised in song, with the projected figures all around — a fantastical menagerie, alluding to outcast permutations of humanity, derived from off-the-shelf 3D models — feeling altogether accusatory. No Man suggests Justice not as some lofty ideal executed by some abstract society but as a fraught and manipulable process relying on our collective consent.

Less couched in reference and allusion is Suzann Victor’s Bloodline Of Peace, with the title itself already suggesting a fleshly, active sense of Peace, rather than motionless idyll. For such a monumental, dazzling spectacle, it’s composed of surprisingly small, hand-wrought parts. More than 34,000 tiny Fresnel lenses, painstakingly joined together in a glittering hanging, gives a vague impression of being able to set the room on fire if someone turned the lights up.

The focus of each of these lens assemblies is a single drop of dried blood, drawn from people representing symbolically resonant categories such as the medical profession, the military, the pioneer generation, and so on. Such a viscerally shared blood-sacrifice, in line with the work’s title, suggests the process of an ongoing struggle, not the static placidity of harmony.

However, despite the cluster of “high-powered” artists on show — Ho, Victor, Zulkifle Mahmod and Matthew Ngui, all of whom have represented Singapore at the Venice Biennale — there’s one work that stands out. And it’s a sizeable salute to Singapore’s most prominent art historian, critic, and curator.

Having spent roughly 40 years critiquing and researching art in Singapore, TK Sabapathy’s presence here is indelible. It’s hard to imagine what art in Singapore might be like if not for his influence.

The exhibition space devoted to Sabapathy is largely given over to a timeline of his various publications, drawn from his own personal collection (and thus off limits to grabby hands, but there’s a reading room immediately adjacent where copies are available for reference). However, the inclusion of portraits of the critic seems like a rather unsatisfactory compromise in having textual displays in a largely visual environment.

If anything, the exhibition as a whole, despite no small amount of seemingly nationalistic signaling, sounds a note of caution when it comes to broad, fuzzily defined “big ideas” to which practically no one could, at face value, object to. 5 Stars reminds us that these notions — whether as foundation or aspiration — are works in process, which stand to be invigorated by challenge and debate.

5 Stars: Art Reflects On Peace, Justice, Equality, Democracy and Progress runs until May 2 next year at the Singapore Art Museum.